Questions about Bison Bank

Residencies & citizenships Portugal Golden Visa 🇵🇹
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Hi All, We did our GV investment through Bison Bank as many of you did. We were pre-approved thru SEF in March 2021 and have still not had biometrics appts (canceled one set in Sept 2021 because of COVID and flight cancelations–sure do regret that!). Anyway, we are now applying for D7 since we are moving to PT this summer. I have two questions about Bison that relate to this process:

  1. We are in the midst of our second compliance review for opening a regular joint bank account (first time we ultimately got rejected, this was thru Bordr). This time we are going through a lawyer and we got one set of questions regarding our GV application and the Bison account, so we can only assume this is what is triggering the compliance review. This is with MillenniumBCP Has anyone else had issues opening a regular checking account while also holding an account with Bison?
  2. This may be a long shot since it’s specific to D7, but has anyone applied for D7 and used the Bison account to satisfy the Portuguese bank account requirement? We are getting mixed feedback on whether that will suffice, although it is physically based in PT and has a PT IBAN.
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I opened a Bison account for my investment… which I still hold. When i arrived in Portugal I walked into Millennium and asked for an account, opened then and there no problem…

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Bison Bank is the custodian for our investment,. My lawyer also helped me open a Millennium BCP account. No problem, although I did have to fill out a bunch of paperwork for both.

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I plan to do the same. I have a Bison bank account for investment and will need a retail bank account for personal/daily transaction in Portugal. Would you mind when did you open Millenium bank account? And did you contact them before walk-in.

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Last summer sometime. No just walked into my local branch, went to the counter and filled the papers.

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Literally walked down the street in Faro and lots of options as long as I had my permanent residence card.

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Similar story our my side (I have a Bison bank account for investment), except that we did everything remotely (from the US) with NovoBanco for some personal bank accounts. The first account we created/opened (for my wife) was a pain and took us a while (2 months during Xmas time). The second account only took 2 weeks since we knew the process and the document needed.

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@AlamoMustang You are a permanent resident now? :thinking:

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@Garbonzo I have my Golden Visa. My kids do not.

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I understand now. You mentioned you have “permanent resident card” which is not possible under golden visa. Only after 5 years.

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Maybe it is just a residence card. Sorry for the confusion

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If in Portugal the easiest is to get your residence cert from freguesia and walk into any bank. They have to open an account.